


brew me some lovin'

by goreallegore, outwardbound93



Category: One Direction (Band), Taylor Swift (Musician)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, coffee shop AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 15:00:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5932537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goreallegore/pseuds/goreallegore, https://archiveofourown.org/users/outwardbound93/pseuds/outwardbound93
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>there’s a boy, a girl, and their best friend. that's how the story goes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	brew me some lovin'

The last person Taylor expects to see when she pushes through the crowd in the campus coffeeshop is her ex-boyfriend’s best friend. It shouldn’t be odd; they do attend the same university, but something about him being there sends warning bells her way. He’s probably the least scary person she’s ever met, so it’s not that she’s scared. It’s the opposite. **  
**

He’s wearing a white t-shirt and has a tea towel thrown over his shoulder like he was in the midst of cleaning a spill only to be interrupted by a customer asking to ring up their order. The whole coffeeshop smells of burnt coffee beans, and she can just about detect the smell on his shirt, even from here. Taylor spent the better part of a summer kicking around New York with him and Harry and Niall’s clothes could fill the whole car with that coffee smell. Not that she minds; in fact it’s refreshing to see how even when things change some stay very much the same.

He doesn’t notice her until she steps up to the till to place her order, though, and then the same familiar smile breaks out across his face. The dimple in his left cheek doesn’t appear, so she guesses it must’ve been a long day. He starts off slow, fatigue probably wearing him down, “Good evening, what would you like to have?”

Taylor scans the assortments of bakery goods, sparse leftovers from earlier now that the coffee shop is teetering toward closing hours.

“You always know best,” she smiles. “What’s the least inedible thing left?”

Niall peers over the counter, his face thrown into sharp relief by the lights inside the glass case. He’s always been kind of baby-faced, which is maybe why Taylor never looked very hard at him before, but he looks older now, worn through a little, shaved down closer to the bone the way a woodcarver learns how to hew closer to the core.

She sees how his eyes, more blue than remembers, flick between the white chocolate raspberry scone and the last slice of lemon pound cake, and if she didn’t have a small queue already filing behind her she would stand here all day looking at him struggle between the two.

Taylor’s about to input her own preference when he visibly lightens up, a wave of excitement rolling over him, “Personally, I’m a huge fan of the pound cake but my roommate always goes for the scone because he likes the soft core-hard surface thing that’s going on with the raspberry one’s. But lucky you! Today, we have a leftover chocolate muffin and they’re to die for.”

“Is your roommate trying to develop diabetes before the age of thirty?” Taylor laughs. She points at the pound cake all the same. “You’ll pay my doctor’s bills, right?”

Niall puffs out his chest, which is certainly hairier and broader than Taylor remembers. “I’ll have him know that a very familiar stranger is concerned about his dietary lifestyle. And so far your bills are just adding to the loans I’m already pocketing,” he grins, ringing up her total and reading it off the cash register.

Taylor plucks out her wallet, fishing for a five dollar bill, when Niall clears his throat, “‘S alright. I got you covered.”

“Such a gentleman,” Taylor teases, tries to pretend her breath doesn’t catch a little around the words.

Niall looks at her a little sideways, same as he always did when Harry was in the middle of one of his never-ending stories and she really wanted him to pass her a damn McDonald’s straw. “I always liked you, you know,” he says quietly.

She grabs the brown bag with a small print of the coffee shop’s logo, two coffee beans on either side of a steaming coffee cup, and thanks him - trying to stay steady and not overthink what he means. All the while Niall’s smiling at her, which doesn’t help the little flips inside her tummy, must be the damn butterflies running loose again.

Again. Like it’s that summer again and he and Harry are pulling up to the curb outside her apartment complex in Harry’s wide open jeep, both smiling like bankrobbers on a runaway heist. Niall still smiles the same, nothing is any different, it just so happens that the feeling inside her stomach is because of him, and not Harry.

Funnily enough, this isn’t the first time this has happened. She’s seen Niall around, sometimes at the gym doing his leg workouts with his personal trainer - Mark it was, maybe? And other times hunched over his books in the library with headphones in his ears and a mechanical pencil wedged horizontally between his canines as he reads chapter after chapter. And every single time she’s felt the same, or not the same; different from before that is.

But it’s kind of hard, not to mention awkward and uncouth, to go up to your ex-boyfriend’s best friend and tell him that he looks really cute with a flush crawling up his cheeks or his hair all ruffled because he’s been running his hand through it for an hour, looking increasingly confused. It’s impossible not to say something now, not with the press of people against her back and time slipping away, irretrievable second by second.

Though if Karlie were to be here she’d push her to take the chance after all what’s a little awkwardness if it could bring along something good? Something better? So, she braves herself, far more aware of the man standing behind her tapping his foot against the hardwood floors impatiently, and says, “Would you like to perhaps get a cup of coffee sometime?”

To his credit, Niall hardly looks surprised. “You’ll have to explain it to Haz,” he warns her.

Taylor cocks her head. “You don’t think I’d go home with you on the first date, do you?” She gives him about two seconds of panicked silence before she laughs. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to run it by your best mate before you decided to have a. Urm, what do you Brits say? ‘Cuppa’ with me.”

Niall chuckles, a soft hum crooning in harmony with the churning of the coffee machine and the buzzing flicker of the overhead light, “Think you’ve got it wrong from the start, no? I’m Irish or did breaking up with me mate come along with forgetting details entailing to my life?”

“All due respect to Northern Ireland,” Taylor tips her head. The frat boy in the suit jacket behind her clears his throat impatiently and she knows she’s got to move along, her time is almost up. “Niall,” she adds, unsure where to go from there once he’s looking at her over the till. In the middle of a crowded room, everything goes that much quieter.

“We were always friends, right?” Niall asks carefully, his eyes flickering over her shoulder to the ever-growing queue.  

“Yeah,” she mumbles, voice low but clear. “I should get going. Kind of holding up a queue here.”

Niall brings his attention back to her, “I’d say.” With a sigh of defeat, Taylor starts to turn when he pipes up again, “think you have my number, right?”

Sure she does. That’s what got her into this mess, Niall’s phone number and the message option on that trivia game they used to go back and forth on for hours.

Niall hands her her steaming cup of coffee and she tightens the cardboard sleeve up the cup so it doesn’t slip around so much. She texts him while she’s sat in her next class, waiting for Dr. Thwaite to rush in red-faced and breathless from the single set of stairs leading up to the second floor.

Like a light bulb she types out her first text, You know who would probably have diabetes?

She’s not expecting a prompt reply, but when she gets one she’s more than pleased.

Who?

With a smile on her face, she answers, My literature professor. She dives into a story about how the man parks nearest to the academic building, climbs up one set of stairs, and still manages to look like a swollen tomato.

I’m going to be your literature professor, Niall taps back. Got two gamey knees and tennis elbow, it’s only a matter of time.

Good thing i’ve got a thing for teachers, Taylor types, then, Sorry, too much?

I’d say you’ve crossed past tier two but nothing too serious, Niall sends in.

So, a healthy amount of flirting is more than welcomed is what I’m hearing here?

Niall replies, almost immediately, darling I’m not sure how you’re hearing anything when very much JUST texting :)

“I hate him,” Taylor tells Olivia, who parks her soft belly on Taylor’s foot and starts purring. Taylor curls her toes, undeniably pleased. It goes easy like that - they were friends, it turns out - until Niall drops by to pick her up for their first date and Harry waves animatedly from the passenger seat, his dimples carved into his cheeks.

Taylor shouldn’t be surprised. She shouldn’t have tossed on her favorite skirt and smeared on the red lipstick she’d recently bought, either, but she is and she did. The growing unease in her belly rolls over once she’s inside the car, sitting in the backseat feeling childish. Though as if on cue Niall makes a point of looking over, taking in how she looks, “You look very pretty.”

Before she can even say her thanks, Harry’s injecting his very much needed opinion, “Yeah! Love the skirt. I think I saw one similar to that the thrift shop near Bronx, the names escaping my mind now, but I can de-”

Taylor tunes him out then. She keeps her eyes on the side of Niall’s face, wondering whether to ask to be let out of the car here. She can stand in the street and wait for traffic to hit her if she really, seriously misread all the flirty conversations she thought they’d been having since she saw him that day in the coffee shop. He meets her eyes in the rearview mirror at a red light, Harry still prattling on about the last thing he baked which normally Taylor would love to talk about, and his eyes say Please.

And, well. She’s always had a soft spot for a boy with manners. She pulls out her phone resorting to her only source of distraction since Harry’s adamant about chewing their ears off about tidbits she either already knows or has no care for. She scrolling through her Instagram application when her phone buzzes with a new text message, a little Niall with the sunshine emoji popping on her screen.

She tries to suppress her smile but something about having a conversation without any third parties knowledge seems very intimate to her. It’s almost like ‘I’m here with all these people but I rather talk to you’.

Be gentle with him, the message reads. Niall pulls them into a spot at the drive-in theater and stretches his arm over the back of the seat, turning to flash a look her way. “We’re about to get snacks, but first, Harry, there’s something we need to tell you.”

“Oh, you’re dating,” Harry says blithely. “I mean,” he wrinkles his nose, “it is a little weird, considering I used to tell you about every time -” Niall punches him before he can finish the sentence. “Ow, Niall! That hurt!”

“Well, if you kindly will keep your mouth shut I can enjoy my lovely date,” Niall says through his teeth.

“Whatever, my reward is going to be you coming to me to tell me every time-” But this time he ducks away from Niall’s punch, announcing he’s off to find his own company for the night.

Taylor waits for Harry to clamber out of the car and saunter off toward the concession stand before she climbs through the gap between the driver’s seat and the passenger’s and settles herself up front. “How long do you think he’ll be gone?” she asks.

Niall twists his face up in thought. “Depends, Swift. What’ve you got planned for me?”

**Author's Note:**

> you can find us here or on tumblr at niallohmighty.tumblr.com and niallspringsteen.tumblr.com!


End file.
